Lead Heart

by Jane Washington

  “Silas has never harmed an innocent person before in his life,” Quillan stated, his resonating voice smooth enough to trap us into a trance as we gazed at him, before it snuck beneath the surface of our skin and cut right through our vulnerable human feelings. He wasn’t even aiming the words at me, but I felt a sharp sting nonetheless. Yas visibly winced.

  “He has hurt people, yes.” Quillan’s voice lost the hypnotising quality and grew distinctly more cutting. “He has killed people, yes… he loses control. He was designed that way; Weston wants him that way. Weston wanted Dominic gone, he wanted Gerald gone; is it really a believable coincidence that every person Silas has killed was a person that Weston wanted dead? You all turn a blind eye when it suits you, but now it’s too much? Now it’s too far? If he really has taken Weston, he’s finally trying to eliminate the reason he is pushed to hurt other people in the first place. He will never kill our father, but he’s reacting on instinct right now. He’s just trying to protect himself, and her.” He pointed at me. “The girl you all find so important.”

  As the eyes turned back in my direction, I found that I could only stand there, bearing the attention as my heart squeezed painfully inside my chest.

  “Silas,” I croaked. I wasn’t sure how long he had been there, but I could feel his heartbeat battering against mine all of a sudden.

  “Are we having a party?” he asked dryly, striding into the room as Noah and Quillan stepped aside for him. He passed his dark eyes from person to person, skipping over me. “An intervention? Or are you imitating bait again?”

  As he voiced the last question, his eyes landed on me, flickering quickly over my face before gripping my own eyes with unnerving strength. I bristled in reaction, my temper rising in defence against the more panic-inducing emotions that fought for dominance within me. It was my usual reaction to Silas, but the feelings had become amplified with the very uncertainly that stood before me. I didn’t know what was true about him anymore.

  “Where is Danny?” I asked without preemption, attempting to keep my tone neutral as I rose shakily to my feet.

  “Oh, you want to get it all out in the open right now, do you, Seraph?” Silas quirked a winged brow, his expression sharpening enough that the air gained a distinctly acidic crackle.

  I tensed, because I had begun to associate the use of my name versus my nickname with his violent alter-ego. I squinted at him, but he was so carefully blank, that I couldn’t tell which of him I was currently challenging. Nahab and Obasi had been situated closest to Silas, and they both surprised me by standing and moving away, sitting by the back wall instead. They were better protected in their new position, and while it wasn’t entirely surprising that they sought to protect themselves against Silas, it was surprising that they had been so obvious about it. Poison and Clarin were the next to move away, but I couldn’t spare them a glance, because I was now certain that Silas wasn’t in control of himself. Everyone else could sense it.

  I struggled for a moment, grappling for the courage that I needed. “Yes. Alright. Fine. Something happened and you’re here because of that something and—”

  “Something?” He loomed closer and my mouth dried up, my knees locking together.

  “Someone get her out of here before she gets hurt,” Yas whispered urgently.

  I wanted to roll my eyes and tell her that Silas could still hear her.

  “If you want to keep your hands… you won’t touch her,” Silas murmured silkily, warning off whoever had stepped up beside me.

  The person backed away silently but my gaze stayed locked on the fire-filled eyes before me. It was probably unreasonable, but I suspected that Silas would lunge for me the second I looked away from him.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “Something. You’re the one who decided to go rogue,” I accused. “So what happens while you’re ignoring us is none of your business.”

  “None of my business?” His laugh was chilling, sending fingers of ice over my skin. “You are my business. Tell me who you were with or I’ll find out myself… and I think you’re better off giving me the name without the details, don’t you?”

  I shook my head, refusing to answer. “Tell me where Danny is.”

  He surged forward. Someone in the room gasped, but I held firm, my chin raised as he stared down at me, using his presence to intimidate me without even an inch of him touching me. I was in agony all of a sudden. He was a part of me and his fury was scorching me from the inside out, even though he hadn’t lifted a finger to harm me. Knowing his pain was so much worse.

  “Who were you with?” he asked again, too softly.

  If he had been anyone else, the whisper would have been as gentle as a caress, but the softer Silas’s voice sounded, the more prominent his menace became. It was a chilling contradiction, made even more frightening than if he had been yelling and screaming.

  “What if it was one of them?” I whispered back, pointing briefly over my shoulder, where I could feel Quillan, Noah and Cabe lingering, prepared to jump in if Silas lost control completely.

  He jolted back a step, his hands tightening into fists, his serrated gaze rising over my shoulder for an extended moment.

  “What are they talking about?” I heard Yas asking quietly, pulling Silas’s attention straight back to me.

  “Which one?” He was gritting his teeth.

  “Me.” Cabe stepped up to my side, his expression unusually serious. “And I get that we need to talk about this, but maybe not here and maybe not right now.”

  “Outside,” Silas growled.

  Cabe sighed, giving me an apologetic look before turning and walking out of the room. I followed, and it seemed that everyone else followed as well, which I thought kind of defeated the purpose of going outside at all… until Silas’s fist crashed into Cabe’s face, and Cabe tackled Silas’s midsection, forcing them both to fall back against one of the decorative wooden railings bordering the small platform that the house was built upon. The railing splintered and their momentum sent them over, plummeting them into the water below. Trepidation held me transfixed; I had to force myself out of the stupor before I could run to the spot where they had disappeared. I grabbed the splintered railing, gazing off the edge as I waited for them to surface. I had no idea how deep the water was, or whether there had been rocks below that might have injured them. Noah was by my side in an instant, pulling me back. I could hear Quillan talking with the others, trying to calm everyone down.

  “Just let them work it out.” He sounded calm, but Yas was panicking, saying that Silas was dangerous and out of control.

  “This is exactly what I was talking about,” I heard her seethe quietly, as though afraid that Silas would hear her.

  The panic inside me surged as I searched the surface of the water, waiting. It clawed at my chest until I felt like I would choke on it, and then it hit me with a sickening clarity that the panic wasn’t entirely mine. Without a second’s hesitation, I wrenched away from Noah and dove into the water. The cold rushed over me in a shock that suspended my limbs for a moment, but I quickly fought through the sensation, allowing the horrible pull of emotion to draw me down. I saw Silas first, his hysteria wrapping cold arms around me and drawing me to where he hovered.

  I couldn’t feel Cabe at all.

  I pulled on Silas’s shirt. He moved in the water enough for me to see that he had been trying to pull Cabe up. He had been unsuccessful, because there was a piece of metal speared through Cabe’s stomach, rising up into the water in an accusing barb.

  I opened my mouth in a silent scream as I met Cabe’s sorrowful eyes. He was holding his pain back from me, even though it was impossible for him to withhold his emotions in a normal situation. I could now feel the wavering control that vibrated through our bond, shimmering with constrained agony. Water flooded into my mouth and I began to choke, but Silas quickly refocused on me. He grabbed the back of my head, fitting his mouth over mine to prevent the stream of water from flooding into me further. He lent m
e his breath, even though he should have been close to running out of oxygen himself, and then he pulled back, his black gaze searing right through me. He grabbed my hand, laying it over Cabe’s chest. When my hand was in place, he gripped Cabe around the middle and Cabe’s concentration slipped, leaking through in a blinding flash of agony that threatened to rouse my anxious valcrick… and then I knew exactly what Silas needed me to do.

  I closed my eyes against the scene that threatened to sever my heart right through the middle, drawing on a harmless feeling of numbness and pushing it desperately into the valcrick that fought to be free. As soon as the power rushed out of me, Silas pulled Cabe free. I clung to them both, keeping my eyes closed and my power flowing as Silas pulled us toward the surface. Hands caught us almost immediately, pulling us up and separating us, breaking my valcrick’s hold of Cabe. My body immediately began to spasm, causing me to crumple into a ball on the stone bridge that we had been pulled onto. I knew that Cabe was the injured one, but I couldn’t seem to convince my body of the fact. Quillan—the one who had pulled me out—immediately moved away as a dreadful scream rent the air. It sounded like Yas, and some small part of my brain immediately wondered at the sheer emotion behind the sound. Who was Cabe to her? Footsteps rushed all around us, and the sounds of a scuffle ensued. I forced myself to focus on the spill of red-tinged water that crept along the stones toward me, steadily growing thicker and brighter the closer it loomed. I struggled up onto my hands and knees, dragging myself closer despite the horrible pain that radiated from my midsection. Noah, Quillan, Poison and Clarin were now holding back the Klovoda members, who were all shouting various things that were too rushed and loud for me to pay attention to. Silas was tearing Cabe’s shirt off, bundling it with his own shirt and jacket in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

  I could barely make out Yas’s demand to call for an ambulance, but it was a useless request. There wasn’t anything an ambulance could do that my valcrick couldn’t do faster. I knew that with a certainty that forced me all the way to Cabe’s bloodied body. Noah and Quillan knew it, too, because they refused to let anyone near.

  Silas backed off immediately as I reached them. I slumped over Cabe, my head falling onto his chest as a pained groan slipped from one of us.

  “Help,” I pleaded the valcrick, desperately clamoring to bring all of the emotions that swirled through the bond under control.

  It hadn’t been so bad the year before when Weston had cut Silas, partly because the wound had been smaller, but also because I had only been bonded to two of them and Silas was better at ignoring his own pain. He wasn’t very good at ignoring the pain that he had caused Cabe, and the agony that emanated from him was almost as bad as the serrated wound that threatened to steal Cabe away from us all. Quillan and Noah were similarly hanging on by a thread, their inner hysteria becoming more prominent as they fought to contain the others.

  Something fluttered inside my chest, and I knew that it was my connection to Cabe.

  He was slipping away.

  I swore and sobbed and screwed my eyes closed so tightly that my face started to ache, but the mangled chaos that screamed inside my head refused to quieten. Silas leaned over me, his body shaking as his head touched my back, his hand on Cabe’s shoulder. We were both crouching over him, trying to stem the reality with the shield of our bodies.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered against my shoulder, his chest shuddering with the breath he pulled in. “Heal him, angel, and I’ll be different. I swear. I’ll stop fighting… I’ll get… help… I’ll stop… Just heal him… don’t let him die.”

  He seemed to have momentarily forgotten that Cabe dying would mean the death of us all. He only cared about Cabe. He continued to whisper disjointed promises and his words began to tame the turbulent storm of shouting that swelled around us, pulling the onlookers into a kind of shocked silence. He pleaded brokenly and his words became manifest in a kind of magic that tripped down my spine. I wasn’t sure what had shifted, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. The others grew silent and I was finally able to concentrate on the ebbing life below me. I poured everything into my valcrick and released it into the air. Silas wound his arm below me as I started to slump, keeping my weight from pressing against Cabe’s injury. I had no control over the valcrick whatsoever; I simply allowed it to flow out of me, drawing on everything that I possessed. It ate away at my energy, and when that was depleted, it took my sight. My eyelids fluttered closed and my breath stopped for a moment of time, causing me to surface in a fit of choking coughs as Cabe stirred beneath us, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tightly enough to convince me that the valcrick had done its job.

  I succumbed to the exhaustion that called for me then, a gentle whisper of relief falling from my lips.

  Quillan was holding me as the now-familiar cluster of chaotic voices swelled around me. I knew it was him because he was the only one who touched me as though he was afraid of holding me too close. That hesitancy was made worse by the need that curled out from his chest, unfurling through our bond and calling out desperately for me. I wasn’t sure what he needed or wanted, so I blinked my eyes open and laid a hand against his chest. He fell into a chair inside the same room that we had vacated, pulling me up tightly to hug me properly. He released a relatively tame string of swear words, indicating that he was feeling as horribly drained as I was—or perhaps he was simply being affected by my own emotions. He set me free almost as suddenly as he had pulled me close, easing me to my feet until I wobbled unsteadily between his legs.

  The Sophies appeared on either side of me, catching my arms and drawing me away from Quillan. Neither of us tried to reach for the other, but I felt as though I was being torn down the middle and I wanted nothing more than to collapse back into him. Jack prevented that, however, when he landed directly in front of me, blocking off my view of Quillan. His narrowed-eyed consideration skipped right over whatever expression had taken a hold of my face and then he was patting my shoulder in a consolatory way.

  “I suspected it…” he mumbled, before turning and waving a hand at someone. “Alice, you’d better release him.”

  I followed the direction of his gaze until I found the Japanese woman in the doorway, her hand on Silas’s arm, guiding him into the room. Noah and Cabe followed, and my knees buckled at the evidence of Cabe’s near-death experience. The mottled white patch in the middle of his stomach was almost a match for the network of scars that spread across my own stomach—though the blood that was smudged all over his skin had me feeling immediately sick, as though his wound would re-appear at any moment. Cabe and Noah both seemed unnecessarily tense for the situation, since the immediate danger seemed to have passed… until I realised that Silas was handcuffed.

  A growl rose in my throat with an animalistic rush of possessiveness, and I lurched forward, ripping Alice away from him. Somewhere in my mind, I acknowledged that attacking a Klovoda member wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but the majority of my mind didn’t seem to care. I was running on pure instinct. Silas released a bitter sound of amusement, and behind me, Jack seemed to have broken out into a genuine laugh.

  “I warned you,” he said to Alice, who had rallied to face me, her pair flanking her.

  “What’s going on?” she asked me, before turning to Jack, including him in the question. She didn’t lose her composure, but she seemed to have tensed as though ready for a fight.

  I backed up until I could feel Silas behind me and then I raised my hands. The gesture would have looked like a position of surrender had it been anyone else, but they knew what my power was, which meant that they could also recognise the threat implied by the baring of my hands.

  “They’re all together,” Jack said calmly, moving to Alice and laying a hand on her shoulder—just as he had laid a hand on my shoulder only a few moments ago. It was a touch that lasted barely a second, but it was enough to make Alice’s pair shift uncomfortably on either side of her.

  “The rumours
are true?” Alice asked, levelling me with a considering look.

  “They aren’t together like the rumours suggest,” Jack said, shaking his head. “They’re together, Alice. All of them. They belong to her and she belongs to them.”

  “She’s…” Alice trailed off, her eyes widening.

  Silas’s linked hands brushed my spine, the pressure slight through the thick, water-logged coat that weighed down my shoulders.

  “Un-cuff him,” I demanded. I knew that I was being unreasonable, but I was too emotionally drained to care.

  To my surprise, Adie took the keys from his Atmá’s hand and walked over to us. I shifted in front of Silas as he drew near, not allowing the huge man to touch Silas in any way. Despite the fact that I was becoming more and more unreasonable by the second, Adie handed me the keys and I quickly turned my back on everyone to unlock the cuffs from Silas’s wrists. I threw them to Noah, who shoved them into his pocket, and then I turned my back on Silas again. I didn’t want anyone touching him. I didn’t want anyone touching any of my pairs.

  I didn’t even want to be there anymore.

  We had almost died.

  I fell down, completely overwhelmed, and my knees caught against a fancy rug that was now stained in bloodied water. My breath caught in my throat as the sobs tore through me with a violent efficiency that disentangled all of the horrible pain from my heart, leaking it into the room until it hung like a heavy fog around me.